


Out of Play

by inlovewithnight



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-27
Updated: 2006-06-27
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:05:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Out of Play

It’s 90 degrees in the shade, so Faith figures there’s no reason not to sit in the sun. She parks herself on a bare metal bench at the edge of the yard, abandoned by the other inmates smart enough to stay out of the miserable afternoon glare. The heat of the metal goes right through her clothes, burning lines into her ass and the backs of her thighs. She holds her ground, wrapping her fingers around the edge of the seat on either side of her knees, her palms stinging with the heat. It’ll all heal overnight anyway, and she can do it over again tomorrow.

It’s practice, in a way. Wait out the pain. Choose to stay. Choose over and over again every minute not to run or hide or look for the easy way out.

Or maybe she’s just going batshit crazy in here. That’s a definite possibility. The dreams she’s been having, for months now, stretching back to the fall; for anybody but her, those dreams would be 100% proof positive of crazy. She knows better, because she’s not anybody else, she is ( _was_ ) a Slayer, and these aren’t normal dreams. They crawl up out of the place inside of her that’s under the skin and the bones, the place way down deep that’s old and dangerous and smells like dusty stone. The place where the power comes from.

Power that she doesn’t touch anymore, she reminds herself, kicking at a pebble and watching it fly away over the dirt. She’s done with that gig. She’s out of the game. Nice and safe here, in a state-run box, out of the reach of temptation. She tells herself that every time she wakes up sweaty and shaking and choking on dust and her own screams. _You’re out of play, Faith. Whatever’s out there, let Buffy deal with it. She’ll do a better job anyway._

Thinking about Buffy makes her throat close up all over again, whites out her mind with panic, tightens every muscle with the need to fight or run. She ducks her head and grips the bench tighter, willing herself to be still, to be calm, to make it through another minute. Yeah, last night’s dream was worse, but that doesn’t mean...

Last night’s dream was worse than _worse_. She knows it, and the frustrated power bottled up under her skin knows it too.

 _Falling. Falling, falling, falling, through fire and light and pain-- God, so much pain-- breath boiling in her chest so she can’t scream-- and there’s no end, nothing to stop her, she’s going to fall and fall and fall and burn until she--_

Her stomach twists and she chokes back a cry. She’s got nothing to cry about; it wasn’t her. She remembers the feel of her body in the dream, familiar but not her own, something she took without permission and left worse off than she found it, like everything else she’s ever had. Buffy’s body. Buffy’s dream, coming to her through the power between them.

 _I don’t want it,_ she rages at herself, at whatever thing lives in that place inside her and gets so pissed off about the way she’s out of the fight. _It’s not my life anymore. I don’t know what any of this shit means, stop putting it in my head!_

“Faith.”

She looks up. It’s Lockley, looking flushed and unhappy in her uniform in the heat, one hand resting on the butt of her gun and her eyes scanning over the rest of the yard.

“Yes ma’am,” Faith says, keeping her voice flat and her head down. She only just got the privilege of coming out in the yard with the other kids a few weeks ago, she’d rather not get it taken away again for anything a guard can blow up to the level of insubordination.

Not that she thinks Lockley would do that; she’s different now from the cop who took Faith’s confession in LA. Less angry and more tired and with a kind of resignation around her eyes, like she’s realized that she’s not going to find peace and decided to settle for consistency. Faith gets that. She knows that feeling.

Lockley shifts her weight, glances around, looks back at Faith and shrugs. “Not today.”

Faith closes her eyes and ducks her head down, fighting the twist in her stomach again. It had been months since he’d visited, but she understood that, understood that shit happens and life happens and he’s out there saving souls and might not have time for her. But if something’s happened, something world-ending big like her dreams have hinted, if something’s happened to _Buffy_ , he needs to come tell her. She needs to hear it from him. She needs to _know_.

But visiting hours have ended and he’s not here. And now she’s got another layer of don’t-know on top of the first one-- did stopping the world-ending thing take him out too? Because they must have stopped it; the world’s still there and anyway it’s never going to end on Buffy and Angel’s watch.

Or has he forgotten about her? Just left her behind like everybody else in her fucked-up excuse for a life?

There’s the anger, low and hot and the most familiar thing, her best friend as long as she can remember. It will never leave her. It will always take her back.

 _One minute at a time, Faith._ Angel’s voice in her head. _Wait it out. Choose to stay._

Lockley takes an awkward step closer, lifting one hand and then letting it fall. Faith knows she won’t touch her; it’s against regulations and Lockley hasn’t been here long enough to know which regs she can bend. She isn’t sure she wants to be touched, anyway, not now when she’s on the edge between making her choice and throwing all of this away, all of Angel’s redemption and promises and bullshit.

“You know,” Lockley says, still looking around the yard and gripping her gun and maybe not talking to Faith at all, except Faith’s the only one there, “he saved my life too.”

“Yeah, and look where it got both of us,” Faith snaps back, the anger slipping up through the cracks in the calm she’s tried so hard to build over the past year. God, she’s so close to saying fuck it all and being done with this. She could get Lockley’s gun-- easy-- be up and over that wall-- _easy_ \-- this place can’t hold a Slayer if she decides that’s what she’s going to be--

Lockley looks at her sharply, and Faith suddenly thinks maybe she was wrong, a little, maybe that’s not resignation on the other woman’s face, but resolve. “I don’t think he saved us so we could hide from the world.”

“It’s a prison,” Faith says, digging her heels down into the dirt. “What else are we going to do?”

Lockley shrugs and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Maybe figure out how to live without him around to hold our hands.”

Faith’s got nothing to say to that, so she falls back on habit. “Yes ma’am,” she says, and Lockley walks away, scuffing dust up from the yard. Faith unclenches her hands from the edge of the bench and looks down at the red, sore lines across her palms.

Then she rests them flat against the metal again, tilts her head back so the sun hits her face, and starts counting off minutes again, counting off choices, waiting out the pain.  



End file.
